Parchment Or Person?

Helen Lewis scours the 300 tattooed “slivers of skin from the 19th and early 20th centuries” currently held in London’s Blythe House:

So how do you harvest a tattoo? These days you’d use a dermatome, a gadget invented in the 1930s that slices off a fine layer of the epidermis and is now used for skin grafts. In the 19th century, you had to use a scalpel and care; many of the Wellcome [Collection] specimens are of different thicknesses or marked with slashes, or have scalloped edges from being stretched and pinned during preservation. Some are thick and soft like leather; others are scratchy and stiff like card; some are translucent when you hold them to the light.

A sample of the collection:

“Guess what that is.” I can feel my brow furrowing as I regard what looks like an L-shaped piece of parchment with a small doodle on it. Disconcertingly, in the hinge of the shape, there is a clump of hair. “It’s an armpit,” says [Gemma Angel, tattoo historian], tucking it away. She holds up a pair of eyes, preserved separately, and grins. “These are from buttocks. I think it’s so that when you turn your back, it’s like, ‘Lads, I’m still watching you.’”

Studying old tattoos involves certain precautions. The collection Angel is working with has been preserved with formaldehyde, so we have to turn on a nozzled fume extractor that she calls the “elephant’s trunk” every time we take a piece of skin out of its wrapper. Despite the trunk, the smell of preservative hangs in the air and I can feel a headache being born somewhere in my sinuses. My hands are sweating uncomfortably in their latex gloves.

What I’m not feeling is queasy – and this surprises me, because touching other people’s buttocks and armpits, once they’ve been detached from the people themselves, ought to be slightly disorientating. However, the tattoos look so much like they are on parchment that it’s hard to remember they once sweated and tingled and hurt. The only moment of connection I have is when Angel holds up an intricate chest piece – complete with nipples – against her torso, to show off its impressive size. “Big guy, huh?” she says.